


Aftermath

by steampunkepsilon



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Anxiety, Crying, Cuddling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Present Tense, bed sharing, brief brief brief mentions of self-harm/depression, so much crying, steamy is a terrible person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-30
Updated: 2014-06-30
Packaged: 2018-02-06 20:13:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1870905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/steampunkepsilon/pseuds/steampunkepsilon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mixed feelings follow the aftermath of the not-end of the world.</p><p>*2017 edit* I may be returning to this to rewrite it for the sake of poorly depicted mental things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aftermath

**Author's Note:**

> This is a little rough in terms of writing. Just warning you.

Hermann, surprisingly, is very, very good at understanding the human mind.

He seems to be all about numbers and science and things less complex than emotion, things that have an answer, a yes and no, a right and a wrong. Pressed slacks and sweatervests and cane and constant white power stains on his jacket sleeves, he's unassuming, narrow eyes peering over the round rim of his glasses; an academic sort, grumpy old math teacher at Stanford or Oxford or something ancient and dusty like that. But he's not. He's complex, terrifyingly so, and he really does pay attention. To everything. He isn't inhuman; flawed and anxious and nervous. But he's observant.

Newt knows that before the Drift. Just a little, he gets glimpses of it, and says nothing, never _ever_ because oh, man, Hermann would kill him if he ever played detective on him out loud. He can see bits and pieces of him here and there, can see him when he practically psychoanalyzes people from afar, people who threaten his bubble of organized safety, and deflects the problem. He's in control of his own space, of his interactions, and that alone is impressive. Newt was a subject, a long time ago, when they first met; granted, that didn't go great, but they'd eventually adjusted to each other's space, and he felt a little bit special, privy to that kind of allowance even if Hermann still liked his bubble. They bicker. It's alright. There's affection in there somewhere, a sense of _'I hate you but you respect me deep down there somewhere, and you hate me a little less than everybody else. '_

But of course, he doesn't have time to think about that too much. The world is ending. Kaiju are crawling out the ocean, out of the ground under his feet, out of every crack in the wall, and the both of them are clinging to every scrap of data they can drag out of the Drift before everything goes up in smoke and blue ooze. The few final days are days spent without any sleep, coffeepot parading back and forth between their mugs like a monk wishing them blessings. More than once Newt loses track of time and looks up to realize he's been elbow-deep in the same stretch of Kaiju organ for an hour and hasn't moved.

Hermann is not immune. Newt catches him, in the last mad scrambling days, rewriting equations, writing them more than once; even finds him napping on his ladder once, and shakes him awake and passes him fresh coffee and encourages him to keep going, and there's no sense of control except for basic human nature for a while there. 

And then the Drift comes, and Newt is suddenly enlightened to way too many things to handle at once, as is Hermann, and the worst part is he can feel Hermann mulling over the fragments of Newt's being that he's discovered, the things he saw, like he's savoring them, tasting them, examining them like an equation, and having someone else -- having someone like Hermann -- in his brain is a tiny bit frightening. Nevermind the Kaiju, Hermann could be the goddamned apocalypse all by himself, and he barely has time to retaliate and even begin to grasp what's rolling around in the mathematician's head before they have to go save the world. 

He hooks an arm around Hermann's neck and hugs him close, euphoria keeping him gleeful and awake and alive throughout the mass celebration that follows. Nobody really cares what will happen after; nobody cares about the cleanup or recovering the Jaegers from the Pacific, or the lives they've lost; not in the apathetic sense, but they all know Pentecost and Chuck and the triplets and the Kaidonovskys would be proud would want them to celebrate, to rejoice, and for a day and a half after, the whole world does. Adrenaline can keep those left behind going for hours and hours. Every national anthem on the planet is being belted out, candles lighting up the coast and the inner cities, and there's a conga line as long as most of the PPDC employees. The Jaeger pilots gather more privately after they've been heralded, Raleigh and Mako mostly, but Herc too, and Tendo and even them, the forgotten nerds in the grouping, hauled into crushing hugs and celebratory claps on the back. Nobody's slept right in days; nobody seems to care. They party on, true troopers of celebration. 

The Dome is quiet again after that, the local military pitches in to begin the cleanup process, and after two solid days of running around like a madman and singing his nerves to a crisp, and much longer without decent sleep (since the first Drift, honestly), Newt disappears after dinner and finds his quarters; empty and quiet, quiet, quiet, thank god. He can't even remember the last time he actually used the neat, square bed, and it's too clean to be his room, even though there are telltale signs of his ownership there; his clothes, his books, his meds, everything personal he has. He stands there a long moment and surveys it, the quiet both relieving and a bit unsettling, dim light easier on his eyes than flashes of Kaiju knowledge and dissection lights and computer monitors. 

It hits him like a brick and he breathes out, deflating with a thin sort of noise and crumpling to the ground a few feet in front of the door once it's shut, exhausted and aching everywhere he thinks to check and briefly entertaining the thought of getting up to shower before he makes sure the area is clear and slumps down onto his side, back to the door and curling up. He smells like champagne and sweat and blood and dirt and metal, and his eyes hurt like hell, the pain spiking up over his head and straight down his spine. He feels like his brain has been torn open and picked at and studied like the specimens in the lab, and it makes him sick even thinking about going back in there now, stomach churning unhappily as he lays on the cold floor. 

The Kaiju, he thinks. They were in his head, picking at it, _prying_ him open. A lab specimen in another world, like humans cutting up a mouse. He hasn't had time to think about it, not with everything happening, and he shudders, hands sliding up to shove his glasses off his face and cover his eyes, his ears, dragging up through his hair. He can do this. He breathes in, throat already feeling tight, and pain spreads in his chest to add to what's already there, breathing out again staggered and shaky and tense. He has time to think about it now, about the invasion in his mind, and that's the only thing he can think about. The fragments of Hermann left there aren't distracting enough to keep him focused, dwelling on the deep gouges left by Kaiju claws on the flesh of his thoughts, blue burning at the back of his eyes, glowing and toxic. 

It's mostly shaking and silence, tears down his face but no sobs -- he'd have to be breathing for there to be sobs, have to take in air to choke it out and he does every once in a while, but that disturbs the silence and Jesus Christ does he need some quiet right now, something to dull the edges of the noise in his brain. He forgets for a minute and his lungs burn and he gasps suddenly, sucking in air with a strained noise, a few quick panicky breaths following as he trembles on the sheet cement floor with its thin layer of something else, linoleum or whatever it is. His glasses are off somewhere and his vision is blurry anyways with tearwater, hot and burning. He feels briefly like he's going to be sick again, but surprisingly, he didn't eat much in the festivities, so he doubts there's anything to bring up as it is. 

He should be happy, he scolds himself. He should be excited. They made it. They won. 

Another choked whimper wrenches itself out of him and his stomach twists again, and he brings his arms up, elbows over his face as he gripped at the nape of his neck, fingers probably still dirty and tinged with Kaiju grime, but he can't really bring himself to care now. A few strands yank out as he shudders and clenches his fingers; the sting is almost relieving and he has to pointedly force himself to remove his hands, the vague fear he doesn't want to consider (that he might continue for something to ground him) presenting itself. He won't sink that low. Self-neglect, one end of the spectrum; self-harm is another he won't step to again. 

He's so caught up, he doesn't hear the knock, and he doesn't hear it open, either, back turned and his face against the cold ground and trembling. He only stiffens in realization as words make themselves heard, a familiar voice and unfamiliar tone of concern (not unfamiliar; he could remember just barely what Hermann sounded like dragging him out of the first Drift, and it sounded like that with less panic laced into it) from above him. 

" Oh, Newt. " 

Newt doesn't want to look up and see Hermann looking down at him (literally and figuratively), doesn't want to see pity, certainly not disgust. If he could have he'd have locked himself in the bathroom instead, but he wasn't coherent enough, wasn't there enough for that, and he holds onto the breath he had before and turns against the hard surface more, a trembling mess of sick and anxious and hollow. God, he felt like shit. And now Hermann was there to bore holes through him and watch him disintegrate, and he couldn't even tell him to go away.

To his dismay, the door closes quietly and locks; the only fear in that is that he’s going to get a lecture, a reprimand, and he just can’t do that right now. He can’t handle having someone grate down why he’s such a piece of shit – normally he can bounce it off, but not right now. He’s not afraid of Hermann in the physical sense, in the sense that he’s useless right now and he doesn’t have the energy to fight anything off, not like that. But the threat of emotional scorn is almost worst. 

Almost. 

Hands sliding over his face and hiding it behind his arms, he hears Hermann moving quietly, the tap of the cane against the floor and then the wall, the shuffle of clothing. He hadn’t seen him since last night, understandably; he’d been sore, burnt out much faster than Newt. Probably had been in his room all day. Had Tendo told him he watched Newt scurry off sluggishly to his room? Maybe. Jerk. 

According to ten years of experience, Hermann did not sit on floors. His anxiety didn’t allow for it, his need for some semblance of cleanliness at all times possible as well, and he had only ever seen him on the floor…well. The first Drift came to mind again. But now there was the sound of his cane being laid down on the hard ground, and he could feel movement behind him; Dr. Gottlieb, mathematician, Jaeger expert, anti-floor-sitting-committee-Captain, settling down behind him, one slim folded thigh in line with the curve of his curled back. He sniffs in another breath, vision useless – blurred up close from tears, from afar with his vision being natural grade-A shit that it was. But he can feel. And he feels Hermann’s hand rest against his shoulder, his palm warm and still amidst his trembling, and he tightens up a long moment before the air sags out of him. He collapses his lungs and breaths in again, air deep and heavy for a few cycles. He feels like an overactive bellows and it hurts for a moment, the oxygen tight in his chest.

Even without turning around, he can tell Hermann is looking at him, and whatever expression he has on his face, he’s reading him like a book. The Drift didn’t exactly help in delaying that. Hermann can read him like a fucking book and he’s not sure if that makes him feel better or worse. 

Worse? Worse.

But then Hermann’s hand moves and rubs a slow circle over his scapulae, palm flat against the wrinkled shirt he’s been wearing three days that still has bloodstains down the collar and stains of harmless Kaiju mucous on the sleeve. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t fuss, just rubs his shoulder, and Newt sniffs again, a few more shaky breaths rattling out of him as he lays there in his crumpled crescent. He hears him reach for something, plastic against the ground, and realizes he’s found the discarded glasses; but he doesn’t put them back on his head, just keeps rubbing his shoulder until the trembling begins to die off. It’s nearly ten minutes before he can breathe again properly, and he sips at the air tentatively, throat sore, the side of his face slick with saline, stiff from laying one the ground. Hermann’s hand shifts from the repetitive circling its been doing for what feels like years over both shoulder blades and slides up to rest over the connection of his trapezius and deltoid, squeezing gently. It’s not his own thought that interjects the desire to ignore Hermann’s movements.

 _Sit up._

He resists, moves with weak limbs, and then slowly pushes himself to sit up, wavering and rubbing his face slightly. He feels half-cold from the ground and half-hot in the face, cheeks uncomfortably wet, nose running. God, it’s nasty, and he wipes himself as clean as he can on a sleeve, back still sort of turned to Hermann as he tries to gather himself up. He’s sure he looks like a mess and everything past his fingertips is blurry and muted anyways, and he takes a more steadying breath, sighing. Still trembling in the hands a little, but he can breathe. Hermann’s hand slides down his spine and stops in the middle of his back, a soothing stable point in space, and he can’t help but lean back pathetically into the touch. Hermann doesn’t pull away, rubbing his thumb over the smooth plane of Newt’s back, and he looks at the floor, tired and puffy-eyed and more than a little bit ashamed. The hand rubs up again, towards his nape and back down. Hermann doesn’t speak until he’s calmed down more and wiped his face up a bit, bless him. 

“ You should shower, “ he murmurs, tone weirdly gentle, thumb brushing over the hair at the base of his neck slowly. It’s damn relaxing and he exhales a little, nodding just slightly and closing his eyes a moment before he opens them again. He could sleep now. He’d drop the second he hit the pillow, he knew he would. It would be quiet for a while, hopefully, as long as the nightmares stayed away. Hermann lowers his hand long enough to clean off his glasses with the edge of his shirt, lifting them in offering. Newt turns a bit, hesitant, but accepts them, still unable to lift his gaze past shoulder height but sliding them on with a quiet nod of thanks.

With more ease than Newt’s ever seen, Hermann grabs his cane and pushes himself up almost smoothly, taking a moment to right himself before he offers his hand. It takes him a moment to decide whether or not Hermann can actually help him up, but he takes the hand anyways and is surprised by the fact that he very much can, tugging him to tired feet and keeping hold of him until he’s somewhat steady. Newt straightens a bit as well, his eyes cast down a bit at his chin. He’s dressed down considerably, a dark long-sleeved shirt and more casual pants and shoes, cleaned up a little. He had time to calm down, bailing out so earlier. Newt should have, too. 

Hermann can’t help him walk and doesn’t need to, but he can’t say the gentle encouragement of a hand on his shoulder doesn’t prevent him from heading straight for the bed. The quarter bathrooms are all identical and cramped, a standing shower and a toilet and sink, and once he’s decidedly inside, Hermann gives his shoulder another squeeze and turns to leave, and in all of a second and a half Newt reaches to grab his sleeve, fingers brushing against his hand. 

Please. Please _please please._ God, he feels selfish and stupid and mostly stupid at the moment to be honest, but even as he moves to release him and retract the unspoken request, Hermann catches his gaze, glasses gone, eyes still a bit tired but a haze of relief in the grand scheme of things over them. He stands there a moment, looking back at him in the quiet as the faint lapses of memory and the Drift seem to flicker between them. He can’t tell if it’s good or bad, if he wants to reel some of the snippets of connection in or push himself away from them. Newt’s been trying to figure that out for several hours now – if he even wants to think about what they shared, if Hermann even wants it. Maybe it was just a moment of desperation, a search for the truth, for a solution. He’d said so, almost – ‘ _with the world coming to an end, do I really have a choice?_ ’

As if to answer that and his plea and everything else, Hermann reaches to push the door closed behind them with a gentle click, setting his cane against the wall, and Newt feels a weak tremble of relief run through his frame as he watches him lean against the sink for balance as he strips.

 

Newt’s clothes in a filthy pile on the floor, Hermann’s neatly folded on the corner of the sink with Newt’s glasses perched on top, and two plain white standard-issue towels set out on the toilet lid, they stand under the spray a few minutes later, quiet for the most part. It’s a small space and as fidgety as Newt normally would have been, he was too tired to care, and his forehead dropped unceremoniously against the mathematician’s shoulder after a few long minutes. They hold each other up, one of Hermann’s hands against Newt’s arm when his leg wants to give, his head on Hermann’s shoulder for the emotional crutch it is. There are still a few wounds, the cut over his forehead barely healing, subconjuntival hemorrhage dissipating easily enough, bruises here and there. Hidden well under Newt’s ink, the sprawling Kaiju devastating false oceans across his arms and up his torso. They don’t hide so easily on Hermann, all smooth lank muscle and pale, plain skin, and once Newt has surpassed the mild shock of ‘I’m in the shower with Hermann and that is totally normal’, he glances down his torso a bit. Some trips, some stumbles. It’s been a rough few weeks. It’s been a rough few years, honestly. He doesn’t touch at first, knows how he is with touching and standing right there in a glass box with him, he can tell even more, but after a while he lifts a hand to rest lightly against the corresponding shoulder, a dark mottled gray-blue splotch forming there. He can guess easy enough, the trip back to the Dome; they’d both slipped in the rain a few times. It will heal. Hermann doesn’t flinch away, inclines a bit towards, him, weight shifting off his right side. Too comfortable, too at ease, Newt let the hand on his shoulder drift down and wrap around his side, palm warm under rivulets of water against the small of his spine.

Hermann doesn’t stop him, and he can feel him lean his head a bit more heavily against his own. 

 

Half an hour later, the water runs cold and sparks a jolt of displeasure out of Hermann’s stance, and he shoots it a filthy, murderous look out of the side of his head as Newt quirks the weakest of smirks of amusement. He gestures him out first and Newt complies, dripping on the shower mat and picking up a towel, then offering one as Hermann steps out himself, stance cautious on slick tile. Newt keeps his hand there a long moment as he dries himself a bit, then moves to redress, once again leaning on the sink. Newt slips out into the cooler bedroom air with a shudder, tossing his clothes at the hamper near his bed and fishing around for something clean. Once he’s actually decent, old T-shirt and shorts like heaven around him (something without buttons, thank Christ) he paused, glancing into the bathroom again. Hermann is dressed again and holding his towel and glasses, and Newt tosses them up to dry over the shower door once he can see again. 

When he glances at the bed and one knee buckles briefly under him, Hermann puts one hand on a shoulder and another on his back and pushes him forward slightly until he stumbles down onto it, liquid stone as he sags suddenly, cotton kryptonite pulling the strength from his bones. Newt drops onto his face and exhales into the pillow, turning to watch Hermann as he settles down on the edge of the mattress beside him. Reaching around and under him, he grips the blanket and pulls it down, shifting it from beneath Newt as he attempts to push himself up and assist in the effort, and once it’s free he collapses again with a huff. 

“ I’ll let you sleep, “ Hermann murmurs, drawing the blanket over his shoulders, and little red flashes go off in his brain. Apparently the mathematician feels them too and he pauses for a moment, long enough to catch Newt’s gaze; they sit in the quiet for another moment, and reaching for his cane, Hermann slides his hand away and stands. Blinking at his retreating back, he lifts his head, another plaintive cry echoing in his head, apologizing for the unspoken request and still not wanting him to leave no matter how really, really stupid that desire is --

Hermann turns and gives him a look as he reaches the door, lifting a hand and flipping off the light. It plunges them both into soft darkness, the blue strip of light around the ceiling casting enough of a glow to let him track the other man as he walks back to the bed with his slow, lilting gait, and sets the cane aside. Without questioning or hesitation, he lifts the blanket, sliding in beside him with a bit of adjusting in favor of his leg and relaxing back against the other pillow, exhaling in the quiet. Newt slowly settles again, a flush of stupid stupid stupid warming his face, but he’s too drained to care much more than that. 

“ Thank you, “ he murmurs abruptly in the quiet, gaze fixed on his shoulder in the dim light, and he catches Hermann turning his head, glancing up. The mathematician levels a long, silent look at him, and he’s not sure what it’s supposed to imply, but after another moment Hermann reached over with a hand and plucks the glasses away from his face, blurring his vision. They click down on the side table and he follows the sound with a glance, squinting as Hermann settles back again, vaguely able to tell as he closes his eyes. There’s no ‘you’re welcome’, no questioning what the thanks were for. He knows. 

Newt watches his fuzzy outline for a moment longer before closing his eyes, letting his forehead slip down just enough to rest against his shoulder, exhaling slightly in the calm. “ G’night, Herms. “

“ Goodnight, Newt. “


End file.
